Under “Why is there no Channel One?”, you wrote in part, “…the Channel One band (44 to 50 MHz) was reassigned for use by people with mobile radios. Considering how things have turned out, maybe they should have reassigned Channels 2 through 13 while they were at it, thus sparing the nation such horrors as Green Acres, arguably the worst blow to civilization since the sack of Rome by the Huns.”
I beg to differ: At least Green Acres had a FEW funny lines, some stellar comic timing, and a cute piglet. (No–Arnold, not Eva Gabor.) The honor must belong to Gilligan’s Island, certainly by far the most fatuous, vapid waste of electrons ever pepetrated on the planet. More horrendous yet? That an entire nation of humans past the age of 35 will be able to sing its entire theme song, note for note and word for word, until sweet merciful death comes to deliver us.
Uncle Cecil’s Why is there no Channel One on television? column is included in The Straight Dope – along with an official Slug illustration. This collection was published in 1984, so it is possible that in the intervening years Cecil has had a chance to develop additional insights as to the relative merits of Green Acres vs. Gilligan’s Island vs. seventeen-plus years of not-always-steller network programming.
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Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
To include a link, it can be as simple as including the web page location in your post (make sure there is a space before and after the text of the URL).
Cecil’s column can be found on-line at the link provided by whitetho. The column (including Slug Signorino’s illustration) can also be found on pages 372-373 of the book mentioned by the same whitetho.